Make no mistake, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End is a hit. The interstellar success of this, the third multimillion-dollar instalment in the increasingly profitable adventures of cockerney seadog Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp), is a done deal. Like the summer’s other trilogies, Spider-Man 3 and Shrek the Third, the movie is a coruscating testament to the power of audience-pleasing special effects, epic value-for-money running times, and innocuous family-friendly narratives.

But that doesn’t mean it’s actually any good.

Eclipsing the 2003 original in length alone, clocking in at an alarming and possibly DVT-inducing 168 minutes, At World’s End begins where part 2 (Dead Man’s Chest) left off. Here, via a plot that repeatedly mistakes incessant convolutions for depth and intrigue, our protagonists are bounced around the known and unknown worlds in a vague attempt to rescue Captain Sparrow from a Sisyphean afterlife of encroaching madness, to recruit the nine international Pirate Lords (don’t ask) in a battle against the evil East India Trading Company, to reunite Will Turner (Orlando Bloom) with his father Bootstrap Bill (Stellan Skarsgård), to punish the murderous Davy Jones (Bill Nighy), to satisfy the ambitions of Captain Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush) and to, well, it just goes on and on.

BACKGROUND

• Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End

• Pirates III: Bye-bye, captain

• Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End

• I want to quit acting, says Keira Knightley

• Bill Nighy talks Pirates

BACKGROUND

• Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest

• Pirates of the Caribbean, The Curse of the Black Pearl

Last blast for Orlando the sea dog

‘No more trilogies!’ Orlando Bloom tells us, on the eve of the final Pirates of the Caribbean

Related Internet Links

• 2007 London Film Festival coverage

• Times Online Film Trailers

The Pirates movies are not renowned for their narrative élan, and characters tend to plunge from boat to boat to island to death to underworld and back again with a remarkable lack of causality. But At World’s End sets a new benchmark in storytelling inertia, with arbitrary plot lines, motivations and character betrayals repeatedly heaped upon each other until, about 90 minutes in (only halfway there!), the only appropriate response is to relinquish any hope of a normative narrative experience and give yourself up to the spectacle instead. “Do you think he plans it all out or just makes it up as he goes along?” asks a stupefied sailor, as Sparrow swings to safety after another one of the movie’s many interminable skirmishes. He might have been discussing director Gore Verbinski’s film-making skills.

Elsewhere, as is typical of third instalments such as Spider-Man 3 and The Matrix Revolutions, the movie is drained of originality and opts for the easy fix of eye-gouging CG imagery and noisy set-pieces. But when you’ve seen a galleon spilling over the edge of a waterfall at the border of the universe, you don’t need to see it racing across an eternal desert, or spun for 20 minutes around a mid-oceanic whirlpool.

The actors do their noble best, although there’s an eerie self-awareness to many of the turns that often desiccates them of charm. Depp’s Sparrow in particular, once so arresting, has now become formulaic and sitcom. Bloom, in support, does typically solid hardwood, and Knightley loses herself in prognathous poses and head girl delivery. The much-vaunted cameo by Keith Richards, of the Rolling Stones, is a damp squib, although it does contain the smartest and funniest exchange in the movie.

And so, no, it’s not all bad news. The movie does, eventually, end, and there are a couple of nice gags in there – “They’re just giving the title away these days,” is Depp’s deliciously throwaway reaction to an unexpected promotion in his midst.

But, ultimately, At World’s End is a seafaring farce that’s so enamoured of its own synthetic spectacle and so cocksure of its own allure that it shows a strange contempt for those masses who will inevitably flock to see it.

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